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A stock market delivered from the brink of depression to record highs in four quick years can be a bundle of insecurities. What happens if the central bank stops cosseting us, and how will it pare back its trove of Treasuries as rates rise? Lately, however, such perennial questions are pushed aside by more pressing concerns.

Last week's 1% pullback has revived fears—altogether now—that the Federal Reserve's monetary medicine is losing its oomph. The Fed's still printing gobs of money, but U.S. manufacturing and services are expanding at a slower rate, and new jobs are being created at the sleepiest pace since June. The horrors!

That wasn't our only worry. Stocks peaked in April in each of the past three years before correcting 10% to 19%, so the "sell in May and go away" brigade is already fretting that April is the new May. Yet with stocks up 23% since June, money managers can't afford to fall too far behind surging indexes. Concerns also are mounting that corporate profits aren't growing fast enough. So buyers piled into sectors with more-stable revenues like health care, consumer staples, and utilities, and these have wrested market leadership from the energy and industrial stocks that propelled the rally in January.

Then there're fears the global economy isn't up to snuff. Oil and copper are plumbing 2013 lows, and investors are scampering to markets where weak growth has central banks pledging their staunchest support. Japan, relatively new to quantitative easing, has jumped 55% since June, and too many money managers are hailing the U.S. as the best house in a crumbling world order.

Still, stocks haven't had as much as a 4% blip since November, and concerns and corrections keep markets from overheating. Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Banyan Partners, thinks the U.S. rally has lately been boosted by the ruckus in Cyprus, which persuaded European investors to steer deposits into U.S. stocks. But he thinks the market is due for a pause before bargain hunters eventually prevail.

Already, the lunge at safety has driven the yield on 10-year Treasuries from 2.06% down to 1.70% in less than a month. BofA Merrill Lynch rates strategist Priya Misra advises selling Treasuries when the yield shrinks below 1.75%, since a strengthening labor, housing, and stock market will help offset fiscal austerity.

In each of the past four years, the first quarter's laggard sectors have outperformed in the second. Of course, that all happened as defensive stocks thrived during the market's spring corrections. Can the same now happen with lagging cyclical stocks? The March jobs report didn't help, but data for January and February were revised upward, and aggregate hours worked rose. The housing market's spring selling season has also been delayed by late-winter storms in the Midwest. Cyclical stocks began doubting before the broad market did, and moderating expectations can only help their cause.

REFINER STOCKS HAVE DOUBLED since June, and those looking to take profits had their pick of reasons. The government wants to cut sulfur content in gasoline by 2017, which could cost refiners hundreds of millions. Gasoline prices track Brent crude oil produced abroad, and the hefty premiums these command to the glut of cheap West Texas Intermediate crude produced here has helped U.S. refiners with access to cheaper raw materials. But as Brent crude slipped recently, the Brent-WTI spread has shrunk from $22 a barrel to $11 over the past month.

Last week's 10% refiner-stock correction can worsen if gas demand weakens. But refiners trade at just 7.9 times projected profits, a discount to historical valuations. "The principal drivers of refining-stock performance over the past two years—accelerated return of cash, monetization of secondary assets, and feedstock cost advantages relative to competing global refiners—remain in place," notes Cowen analyst Sam Margolin.